So how did I end up with this relatively haggard midsize sedan as my first car? Well, I’m not always great at making decisions. Instead of something, I don’t know, good, I copped a G-Body Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham. While very little about this burgundy-on-burgundy slab of Americana fits well with someone who really likes to drive, it does have one ace up its sleeve. While American models largely stuck to Oldsmobile engines, Canadian cars didn’t. This thing was optioned with an LG4, a variant of Chevrolet’s 305 small-block V8 pumping out roughly 140 horsepower. That’s not a bad number at all, and the small-block V8’s aftermarket scene meant that a reasonably peppy 200 horsepower is theoretically possible. Vortec heads, intake, cam, proper carb, old-school HEI, and bam. The previous owner used the Cutlass Supreme as a daily driver from near new to 2014. The oil was changed religiously every 3,000 kilometers, the interior was spotless, the drivetrain felt great, but even Zeibart couldn’t ward off road salt. The Cutlass looked a bit tatty when I owned it, but certainly nowhere near as tatty as it is today. After a whirlwind year of grinders and paint, I realized that I couldn’t keep the car anymore due to a cross-country move. Unfortunately, nobody trawling the classifieds wanted it, and I couldn’t bear to see it scrapped. Cue the internet.
In the summer of 2015, I made a post on the Oppositelock blog asking someone who can weld to please take this thing off my hands. Nick, a machinist and lovable loose cannon, answered the call and had the right skillset to keep it on the road. Nick is a huge Ford guy, but his daily driver was just totaled and he needed a cheap and janky set of wheels. The Cutlass was both cheap and janky, so he hitched a dolly to the back of his dad’s Silverado and made the trek to come get the car. Since a number had to be written on the bill of sale, the official transaction value of the car was a single dollar. I promptly flipped Nick a loonie for a coffee after he hitched up, essentially making the Cutlass a free car. Free to a good home, what more could you want? So what’s happened to the Cutlass since I owned it? Well, a lot. It’s been hit several times, had the frame welded up at least twice, been submerged in Lake Ontario, and yet it still won’t die. According to Nick, it always fires up right quick, no matter what’s happened to it or how old the fuel in the tank is. The old bastard is immortal. I can imagine it’s liberating driving something with the Kelley Blue Book value of a used Trojan. Nick says that drivers give the Cutlass a lot of room on the road, a smart decision given how chunks of rust that may fly off are of the finest General Motors quality.
While it’s been years since I last saw the Cutlass, I’ve flirted with the concept of going back. After all, I met some really good friends through this car. Nick once offered me the Cutlass on a wicked set of slot mags for a really good price. At the time, I couldn’t take it. I was in the midst of a massive job change and just didn’t have the liquidity to confidently take on the old thing. As I dropped off the Genesis GV60 I took to Detroit and saw my 3-Series, I realized that I wouldn’t want to go back. Call it growing soft, or old, or mature, or dull, modern cars are just so good that it’s hard for me to justify spending all my time fiddling with Quadrajets. I now have a job, a flat, bills, groceries, nights out, succulents on the coffee table, and I’m seeing someone. The sort of things that get in the way of big projects, but I wouldn’t get rid of any of them for the world. Rent Boy was right. There’s joy in choosing life, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die. In fact, I was talking to my wife the other day over a mug of fantastic Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest, followed by an equally good Paulaner, about all the cars we used to own. By we, I mean me, dragging these things home and dreaming of keeping them forever, but I’ve always had a bad case of AADD (Automotive Attention Deficit Disorder). Anyway, I posited, and she agreed, with my theory about this. Pretty much from the age of 25 or 26 until a couple years ago around 37 to 38, I’d been on an seemingly endless automotive carousel ride. It reminded me of something Regular Car Reviews had philosophized upon: we reach for the cars that we remember, that take us back into our past, which we choose to remember with rose-colored glasses. We forget the pain, the turmoil, and recall the best of those experiences which formed us into who we are today. It’s natural to look back and try get a hold of something that served as an anchor for that time and place. Short of going back to the schools we grew up in, the homes we lived in, we have the cars that reminds us of “save points” in our lives. The funny thing is, a lot of the cars I’d bought were pulled from a reimagined, or different, childhood than the one I had. One in which maybe my parents had the money for a Volvo or a SAAB and not a busted Ford Escort wagon. Or one in which perhaps I had the money to buy a Toyota Landcruiser instead of an H-body LeSabre for my first car. Maybe even an alternate reality where my first car out of college wasn’t an E110 Corolla but a Celica Supra or an Integra. Sometimes, with an inkling of regret in my heart, fondly remember a car that upset me to the point of listing it for sale. Then, not realizing what I’ve done, sold it in a matter of hours, then starting the hunt again. My past relationship with cars feels like an amalgamation of revisionist history, saccharine reminiscing, and manufactured memories. And as much of a struggle as it was to buy, fix, and turn 62 cars over the course of my early to mid adulthood, I don’t think I’d do anything differently. But if I was given the chance to drive any of those cars again, I think I’d hold my hand to take the key. Well done, that AM/FM AUTO AC PS PB V8 RWD 4DR The best use for one is to put it at the end of a chain to keep your boat from floating away. It is either thrashed beyond all recognition or made pristine. Either one will cause pain. While I wonder where some of my old rides ended up, I don’t go looking for them. The unorthodox detective who plays by his own rules (no matter how many times the brass chews him out) but gets results damnit. And can nail a tire on a fleeing car with a handgun at minute :56 to save just enough time for a quasi-comedic, freeze-frame wrap up in the squad room. Rick Hunter, this is your car. Well, that was a trip down memory lane, thank you. Or an even more obscure, era-appropriate bumper sticker. A few years back, I came across a beat up late ’70s Skylark in a parking lot one night. What absolutely made it for me was the faded Rislone sticker affixed to the back bumper.
